


After Hours

by kryptidkat



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: AND YA KNOW MY BOI CHERRI'S GOTTA BE IN IT, Alcohol, Domestic, Drunken Shenanigans, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excessive Drinking, Explicit Language, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, also Kobra got into Ghoul's homemade alcohol and things get interesting, and the desertborn Girl likes water about as much as can be expected, and the genre is all over the place, and we get Cherri backstory!! finally!, angst aside this is really just an excuse for making meme references lmao, anyway it's bath day, it be like that sometimes, long talks, starts out all fun and games and then whoops gets a little too sad at the end, this literally has no plot okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 15:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20914328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat
Summary: next chapter is sad guys sorry





	1. Bathtime, Drinking Games & Other Ill-Advised Diner Misadventures

In the early days, Cherri stopped by the diner only occasionally to say hello to the baby Girl (it was he who'd found her, after all, barely two years old in that tangled metal heap of a highway wreck beside her mother still warm with a drac blast between her eyes, but that was another story) and then, well. These days he came and went as he pleased and nobody really paid him much mind anymore. It wasn’t home. But it was something like one.

Some times he stayed longer than others, though four walls anywhere always got to be too much for him eventually. He was a nomad at heart, and had odd jobs to do and personal quests to fulfill and penances to serve, so he always left again.

And always found his way back.

He found himself there now, just as the last of the sunset died, and let himself in, front door bells jangling. He set his heavy pack on the floor.

“Cherri! Darling. Love of my life,” Kobra exclaimed, raising a glass bottle in his direction. "You’re back from your expectition. extension. ecshdepi...trip.”

“‘Sup, asshole,” Cherri said. Kobra was even more of a sarcastic little shit than usual when he was tipsy, but for the life of him he couldn’t get long words to come out right. Cherri slung off his pink mask and tossed it onto the closest table. “Did you forget about the peace treaty already? What the hell are you drinking?”

Kobra was in one of three moods when he was draped full length across the couch like that — too down to move, outwardly chill but internally screaming, or actually calm and content. There was some kind of intangible difference in his demeanor between the three and tonight, thankfully, it seemed like the latter.

"Ghoul’s latest hobby. Jet finally consinv..._convinced_ him to try making something that wasn't intended to blow up." Kobra held it out to him.

Cherri sniffed at the bottle. The expression he involuntarily made must have been priceless, because Kobra’s mouth twitched.

“Correction. The first distillery did blow up,” Ghoul said, walking past with a whole boxful of the stuff.

“Only because you were smoking when you went to check it and dropped your cigarette in there,” snickered Kobra, and adopted his best Jet impression. “ ‘Did we learn a lesson today, Ghoul?’ ”

(Now that Cherri looked closer, Ghoul _was _a bit lacking in the eyebrow department, and the little he did have definitely looked singed.)

“Go fuck a cactus,” Ghoul said. “And I told you not to start sampling the wares til we were done. You gonna help me with these anymore or not?”

“Not.”

“Shiny. Thanks. See if I give you any more of these fine artisan spirits to sample.” Ghoul hauled his box away.

“Artisan spirits, my ass!” Kobra yelled after him.

“On that note, do you guys have water?” Cherri ventured, not wanting to impose if they were low.

Kobra frowned at him. “On the note of my...?”

“On the note of artisan spirits, moron.”

“Oh. Right. Water. It was out most of last week but Jet got it running again. Have a drink. Hell, have a bath.” Kobra waved a hand.

“Ha ha.”

“No, for real, if you want.”

Cherri stopped short. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, dude, go ahead. We all already went.” Kobra reached up and grabbed a fistful of still-damp hair to display as evidence.

“Bath day sucks,” a very soggy Girl said glumly, trailing in wearing fresh clothes with a towel draped around her shoulders. “Hi, Cherri.”

“Quit your whining, brat, it wasn’t _that_ bad,” Poison’s weary voice came from the bathroom. 

When he emerged, Cherri took one look at him and laughed. “Wasn’t that bad, huh?”

Poison glanced down at himself. He soaked to the skin and dripping puddles on the floor, soap bubbles clinging to him everywhere. “Shut up, I drew the short straw.”

“You look like a drowned rat.”

“The _dirt_ on that kid. You wouldn’t _believe_.” Poison heaved a sigh._ “_And ornery as shit.”

“I heard that!” A rubber duck glanced off Poison’s face with a squeak. He didn’t even react.

Cherri grinned. “Well, she comes by it honestly.” It was a sort of running joke, that the Girl had this or that trait she inherited from any one of the four when she obviously wasn’t related to any of them. (She did get mistaken for Jet’s a lot, but that was because of the hair.) “Bath toys don’t help, huh.”

“Not in the least. True desertborn, that one. Hates water with a passion. Be glad you missed the running and screaming part. Gimme that, I deserve it.” Poison swiped the drink from Kobra’s hand and took a concerningly long swig. “Ugh. I’m gonna go change. _Again_,” he added, raising his voice in the Girl’s direction, who stuck her tongue out at him. He returned the bottle to his brother and squelched back down the hall. “Tub’s all yours if you want it,” he called to Cherri over his shoulder.

Cherri _did _end up using the tub, which was awesome. So awesome he barely managed not to fall asleep in it. He heroically didn’t do that, though, and instead after a thorough scrub he dragged himself out and rummaged around in Kobra’s room until he found some clothes to borrow. The jeans were way too long and he hated wearing tanks, but hey, they were clean. Ish.

“Damn,” he said when he went back out to the common area, toweling off his hair. “I wasn’t nearly as tan as I thought. Just grime.” He flicked his towel at Kobra’s legs. “Scooch.”

Kobra made a grumble of protest and didn’t budge, so Cherri flopped down right on top of him. “Soda Pop. Sweetheart,” Kobra complained when Cherri accidentally dug an elbow into his stomach while settling in, but Cherri could tell he was perfectly happy. 

Cherri sighed. He missed this. He didn’t know how Kobra managed it because he was all limbs and so damn skinny, but he was the best cuddler and he had this thing where if he felt safe around you he’d melt right into you, boneless. And tonight he actually smelled _clean_ too—like soap, not motor oil and cigarette smoke and whatever. Not that he minded that, either.

Jet walked by. “Oh hey, Cola.”

“Hey.”

Kobra nudged Cherri’s head, still wanting attention even though Cherri was squashing him half to death already. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Cherri propped himself up with his elbows on either side of Kobra so he could see him properly.

Kobra blinked lazily at him, serene and relaxed. A Kobra-smile. “Want some?” He offered Cherri the bottle.

Cherri shifted his weight to one arm so he had a hand free for it. He took a sip and almost choked. “Goodness. That’s vile.”

Ghoul came back in with another armful of bottles. He slid them onto a table. “This is that last of it. Jet, you want one of these?”

“I’ll try it,” Jet said dubiously.

“Tell me what you think.” Ghoul handed him one and bounced on his toes a little with anticipation. Jet, who used to brew alcohol as a side gig and was now a part-time bartender at the Oasis, knew as much about the stuff as anyone in Z-6.

“Take a fuckin’ sip, babe,” Kobra muttered, making Cherri grin.

Jet shook his head at them and tried a swallow. He coughed and blinked hard, eyes watering.

“I’ve had worse,” he said politely, after a minute.

Ghoul beamed, all of Jet’s diplomacy lost on him. “Great! That’s great. Cheers. I _told _you it was good, Poison.”

Poison, who’d come up behind him to snag one for himself, scoffed. “Oh it’s shit, make no mistake. I’m still gonna drink it, though.”

The Girl put a hand up for Jet’s bottle. “Lemme try.”

Jet held it out of reach. “No can do, princess. I think we’ve still got some of those old Caprisun thingies in the top cabinet, though.”

“Yay.” The Girl ran off to retrieve them.

“Kobra.” Cherri sat bolt upright. “I totally forgot, I brought _memes_.”

“I fucking love you,” Kobra said, all sarcasm gone, and shoved Cherri off the couch. “Where are they? Go, go.”

Cherri pulled a haphazard stack of papers out of his rucksack and brought them over.

Poison rolled his eyes. Cherri and Kobra were oldschool meme connoisseurs. Cherri, who fancied himself something of a historian, collected old hard drives and PCs. Mostly their contents were boring as shit, but occasionally he’d come across a cache of memes to add to his archive. He printed as many as he could for safekeeping, switching from half-dead printer to half-dead printer among his stash of electronics, but before he filed them away he always brought them by for Kobra.

Poison watched Kobra leaf through the stack (with Cherri hanging over his shoulder even though he'd already seen ‘em). He huffed a little at some of them, or even snorted occasionally. They usually didn't make him laugh out loud at first glance. Later though, at any given time, Cherri could turn to him and say some bizarre phrase that had nothing to do with anything — _I go kill submarine for the motherland_ or _Mrs. Obama it’s been an honor_ or something equally nonsensical — and Kobra would burst out with that completely uninhibited, high-pitched laugh of his that always hurt Poison’s heart a bit, just because of how rarely he heard it. And Poison didn't get it at all, cuz he himself was exclusively a zone meme guy (hey, zone memes didn’t make sense either, but they didn’t make sense _differently_) and Kobra and Cherri loved those too, but the old ones referred to things Poison had never heard of so as to render them entirely incomprehensible. _That's _why_ they’re funny_, Kobra tried to explain to Poison once when he'd finally asked, frustrated, what the fuck a 'harambe' was.

Kobra bumped Cherri's shoulder with his own. “You find any server hubs out there?”

Cherri sighed. “Not yet.”

“Servers? Whadaya need servers for?” Ghoul interjected.

“Hosting shit. We’re gonna reboot the internet.”

It was Cherri and Kobra’s biggest ongoing scheme. They hadn’t gotten very far.

“Good for you,” said Ghoul, unimpressed. “What's the internet.”

Cherri craned his head around to stare at him. “The internet? You don’t know about the _internet?_ Where do you think—” he brandished a handful of printoffs at him, incensed, “—_these _came from? Originally, I mean. These were on a hard drive.”

“But what _for?_”

“Exchanging information! Important communication, intel, research! Cat videos! I can’t believe you’ve never heard of the—I mean, have you been living under a rock?”

Ghoul slowly started raising his hands to his ears.

“Who doesn’t know about th—Hey, _hey_, don’t you dare turn those off, you mangy dou—”

“So what’s the news, Cola?” Jet asked hastily to divert Cherri and giving Ghoul’s arm a warning smack. “We didn’t go much of anywhere this week, so we’re a bit behind the times.”

It worked. “Uh. Let’s see.” Cherri had to think about it. “Doc’s collecting supplies for the orphanage drive, if you wanna drop something by. Last I heard the Helmet Hair Hooligans were slated to play the Pit in a couple days. A joy who calls herself Pumpkin Spice or some shit took out a whole unit of dracs with a microwave bomb in Z-3. Oh, and Pony and GoGo found a Bruno Mars CD last week and they haven’t stopped playing Uptown Funk since.”

Everyone groaned.

“They’d better steer clear of the diner til they get it out of their systems,” Jet said. “We don’t even talk about the time they discovered Gangnam Style.”

“That wasn’t nearly as bad as when they got their hands on What Does the Fox Say,” said Ghoul.

“Baby Shark,” Kobra said darkly.

With that debate definitively won, the conversation drifted to something else.

“You guys really do live like kings,” Cherri said after a while, taking a swig of Kobra’s drink and making a face. “Roof, water, furniture, the works. Even electricity. This really is awful, Kobra.”

Kobra took the bottle back. “Then give it to me. Yeah, Jet’s fucking handy. Hooked up the tub he hauled in from somewhere and set up the solar and everything, back when he found the place.”

“Free real estate,” Cherri muttered, and the two of them cracked up, making Poison shoot them a weird look.

“Anyone could do it! Stop,” Jet waved it off modestly. Then he clapped a hand to his forehead. “Aw, shit, electricity. Ghoul, remind me in the morning we need more petroleum for the generator.”

Ghoul obligingly started scrawling a note directly onto the table with a sharpie. They didn’t have a battery to go along with the panels to store any of the solar energy they produced, so they kept a fuel-sourced backup for nighttime and cloudy days, though they tried not to use it much then. “Pe...trol...i...how do you spell that, anyway...eh, close enough. Why, how long since we last filled it?”

“I don’t know. A month? No, two.” Now Jet looked confused. “How the hell do we still have...?” he began, but then the Girl reappeared with a Caprisun pouch in each hand, yelling about wanting to play No Smiling, and everyone got distracted.

“Losers drink!” said Ghoul, and started handing out another round.

“I hate that game,” Poison groused.

“It’s _educational!_” insisted Ghoul. “Good pokerface practice for shady deals n’ shit. A _very_ important part of any young killjoy’s education.”

“Yeah, but Kobra always wins.”

“Yeah?” Cherri said. “Betcha I could crack him with two words.”

“Bullshit,” said Ghoul. “Four carbons.”

“Make it five.”

“You’re on, hippie.”

“Really, Soda Pop? You think you can best me?” Kobra sighed and set his stack of papers aside. “If you insist.”

“Square off! Square off!” The Girl pulled them over to a table and sat them down, one in each booth.

“Scared, KobraKid?” Cherri raised his eyebrows at him.

“In your dreams.”

“Maybe you underestimate my power.”

“Maybe you underestimate mine.”

They faced off across the table. Kobra’s face was a perfect mask of impassivity. The others crowded around with bated breath.

Cherri looked Kobra dead in the eyes.

"Cheesed borger," he announced, and Kobra was _gone_.

Two minutes later they had to drag him out from under the table and leave him lying there on the floor, still periodically bursting into helpless giggles, so they could continue the game.

When it was Poison’s turn in the hot seat with Ghoul opposite him, Ghoul didn’t say a word. Just smiled a mysterious little smile and started leaning in — gradually, unrelentingly, never breaking eye contact. He didn’t stop when he ran into the edge of the table but kept inching forward until he was nearly lying on it, a millimeter away from being nose-to-nose, and Poison finally broke.

“Okay, stop, stop!” he wheezed. “You’re such a psychopath. Destroya.” He drained his bottle before anyone could start chanting _drink _and went to go grab another.

Jet got the Girl next, who pulled such a ridiculous face that he immediately lost.

Kobra had recovered enough by this point to rejoin the game. He plopped down into the booth opposite Ghoul and slowly started crossing his eyes. Ghoul bit his lip, but he couldn’t stifle a snort. “Cut it out, creep.”

Cherri had Poison next, and launched into a shaggy dog story so long and boring that Poison finally bared his teeth at him to get him to stop. “I’m smiling, I’m smiling! Shut the fuck up!”

“Ha! Still counts, right?” Cherri said triumphantly.

“New rule: Time limit on turns,” Poison decreed.

They kept playing that for a while, though it somehow eventually devolved into charades, which became a bastardized version of karaoke where you played the records on double speed and if you missed any words you had to take a shot, but soon everyone lost interest in that too and settled back down to the very serious business of destroying their livers.

Some time later, the diner was kind of wrecked. Empty bottles littered the floor. The jukebox in the corner was blaring the Spice Girls. The Girl was on her sixth Caprisun pouch and a terrible sugar high. At least she was mostly non-destructively occupied trying to rollerblade from tabletop to tabletop.

Kobra pretend-scowled at her. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Bedtime is for suckers! Same as baths!”

“You still mad about that?” Poison complained. “That was _hours _ago.”

“Yo, Soda Pop, pass that bottle over here,” Ghoul said from under a table.

Cherri threw it at him. It shattered on the floor. It was almost empty anyway. “Not my name.”

“Kobra says it!”

“He’s allowed.”

“Well excuuuse me.” Ghoul reached up to feel around on the table for more.

“Body pillow’s privileges,” Kobra said from under Cherri, and giggled. A while ago he’d flopped down on the couch again and tugged Cherri back on top of him.

“Dude, you gotta shut up,” Cherri told him. “You are too cute.”

“Fuck you, I’m terrifying. I’m Kobra Fuckin’ Kid. I’ll kick your ass.” Kobra batted at him in mild outrage. He missed.

“Absolutely terrifying,” Cherri assured Kobra, planting a kiss on the top of his head.

“Get a room!” Ghoul jeered.

“Already did,” Kobra deadpanned, “with your mom.”

“OOooOOOH,” the others chorused.

Ghoul grinned and raised his bottle ruefully to acknowledge the comeback. If there was anything he could appreciate, it was a good your mom joke. (The Girl just frowned—some things, thankfully, still went over her head—and reached for another Caprisun.)

“Nice,” Ghoul said when the noise died down. “Seriously, are you two sure you’re not a thing?”

Kobra and Cherri glanced at each other. “Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy,” they recited simultaneously, and dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Ghoul glared at them, trying to parse out if _weather boy_ was some new zone slang insult he should be offended by. “Forget it,” he said. “Peace treaty, guys. Unless you want me and Poison to start again.” He rolled over to help Jet with the rude limericks he was composing.

“Sorry,” Kobra said to Cherri. “He’s always more...”

“Ghoul,” Cherri filled in.

“Yeah. When he’s drunk.”

Cherri shrugged. He still didn't really know what Ghoul's deal with him was, but he knew better than to start new shit. He already didn’t have enough time to deal with everyone who had a score to settle with the guy who _used_ to wear his face. Like, get in line. He figured Ghoul must not hate him too much, though, or he’d have told him so by now. Or punched him. Something.

Jet, crosslegged on the floor, strummed at his battered guitar.

“There was a BLInd agent named Korse,” he was saying, “Who thought he was brilliant of course...You’ll be blinded, struck dead, from his...uh, shiny bald head, and he...he...”

“Truly smelled worse than a horse,” Ghoul supplied.

Jet gave him a solemn nod. “Aha. Thank you.” He strummed again, hitting a truly shocking out-of-tune chord, and started over.

Ghoul sniffed the air. He’d swear he could smell rancid tomato or something.

He scooted around, and found Poison fingerpainting on the wall with ketchup. “The hell are you doing?”

“Art,” Poison said, loftily. “Go on ‘n laugh, dustbag, this is harder than it looks.”

“Yeah, and smells worse too,” Ghoul muttered. He squinted at the half-finished piece. The best thing that could be said about it was that it was abstract. Maybe Dadaist. “Is it supposed to look like that?”

"You dissin’ my work?”

Oops. When Poison was drunk, he could swing between cuddly or pensive or extremely hot-tempered, and Ghoul had just flipped the switch.

“Weapons at the door, Poison, don’t point that at — oh shit.” Ghoul scrambled to get away. “Jet, Jet, make him stop!”

Poison chased him around, trying to fling ketchup at him from the squirtbottle. Ghoul snatched up a nearby mustard to retaliate.

“Get him, Poison,” Cherri said. “Teach him to disrespect true artists.”

“Tear the bitch apart!” Kobra cheered. Cherri wasn’t sure which of them he was referring to, or if it mattered.

“Make him take another bath! Go Team Ghoul!” the Girl hollered.

Jet just cracked up, not even yelling at them to quit making a mess.

And that was definitely what they would have made, had Ghoul not immediately slipped in some of it and hit the floor, taking Poison with him and fortunately putting an end to the scuffle. Poison laughed until he cried, sat up, abruptly declared he wanted ramen, and made more-or-less of a beeline for the kitchen.

"Shit. Jet, Girlie. Somebody. " Kobra flapped a hand to the room in general. "Stop him before he puts the metal bowl in the microwave again."

Ghoul sighed, but he went. “Poison, wait.”

They never did come back, so Cherri hoped they weren’t getting into more trouble in there. (He shouldn’t have worried —the next morning they found the two of them curled up asleep in a pile on the floor, surrounded by ramen packets they hadn’t even gotten the chance to open before they passed out.)

Jet heaved himself to his feet and set aside his guitar.

“Ok, no more tropical punch for you. Bed,” he said, scooping up the Girl mid-skate effortlessly around the middle with one arm, and went over to the couch where he usually slept only to find it very much still occupied.

He must have decided it would be useless to ask Cherri and Kobra to move, though, because he just looked down at them balefully for a minute before saying, “We’re taking your room” and hauling the Girl away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is sad guys sorry


	2. Albatrosses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What a pair the two of them made when the sun went down—Kobra with his questions, and Cherri with his ghosts.

Kobra’s arm was falling asleep. He shifted under Cherri and they both had to scoot around a bit, ending up more on their sides facing each other, with Kobra’s back up against the couch and Cherri barely not rolling off the long edge, but they got it sorted out.

Kobra patted Cherri’s mostly dry head once they were settled. “Your hair is like, three shades lighter, dude.”

“Who knew.” Cherri grinned a bit sheepishly. “Don’t really remember the last time I washed it.”

Kobra’s fingers slid down his blue streak. “How do you get this so bright?”

“Oh,” said Cherri. “It’s white, underneath. Just started growing in like that at some point.”

“Sick,” Kobra said. And it was, sort of, though Cherri’s offhand tone was oddly sad, and Kobra could only imagine what kind of shit you’d have to go through to develop white hair at Cherri's age.

Cherri burrowed more comfortably into the cushions and exhaled a quiet, incredulous laugh.

“I never thought I could have this, KobraKid,” he admitted.

He said Kobra’s name different than anyone else. It didn’t sound formal when he used all of it, somehow. To Party and occasionally one of the others, Kobra was mostly just K, and to Ghoul more often than not he was Snake Boy, which Kobra hated but had come to recognize as simply Ghoul’s derogatory brand of affection—but the way Cherri said _KobraKid_ like that, all one word, made him feel stupidly, absurdly happy.

“Have what, Agent Cherri Cola?” he said back.

“Not Agent,” Cherri said mildly. “Not anymore. Not for years.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Kobra wasn’t sure where he’d heard it. Other people still referred to him like that, but he guessed not with his permission. Oh fuck. It’d probably been a gang thing. What were those doomsday cult bastards called? The Peace Troops or some shit?

Soldiers for Peace, that was it. Cherri had alluded to his days with them before, in vague terms, though he hadn’t told Kobra much about it and Kobra had been careful not to pry.

Cherri had already shrugged off his apology. “This,” he said, and Kobra had to rewind in his head to realize he was answering Kobra’s question. “Some days I think I have more enemies than friends, out here.”

“What?”

“Well, most of the time they’re not people I remember. They remember me, though.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it made Kobra’s stomach twist. How could anyone hate Cherri? Surely not Cherri—not gentle, weird, kind, poetic Cherri.

Before he could respond Cherri continued, “I dunno, it’s nice. Having you guys. A place to go sometimes that’s still standing when you come back.”

“That’s not what you were fighting for?” Kobra said absently, before realizing he might have crossed a line and biting his lip.

But Cherri was apparently an open book, tonight. Neither of them were properly drunk anymore, just buzzed and exhausted and a little too honest.

“I’d like to think I was, at first.” he said. “Forgot that pretty quick, I guess. Still, it wouldn’t have been for us. It would’ve never been for us.”

“Oh.” Kobra thought that over. “No. I guess not.”

Cherri’s hand strayed to his dog tags, a gesture Kobra was well familiar with. A tell he was straying a little too far into the past. “They’re all ghosted, you know.”

“Yeah.” Just something to let Cherri know he was listening.

“Only reason I did get out. If any of ‘em survived, I'd probably still be running with them.”

_You wouldn’t_, Kobra almost blurted out, but he stopped. Better just to listen than try to refute what they both knew deep down was probably all too true.

“It was a massacre in the end,” Cherri went on, half to himself.

Kobra glanced down to the worn bits of metal Cherri was worrying between his fingers so Cherri wouldn’t see the concern in his eyes he wasn’t sure he could mask. “You don’t have to, Cherri,” he said, low.

Cherri took a breath. “No, it’s...I’m...It’s better to, right?”

Because he couldn’t keep on like this with Kobra, knowing he didn’t know. Kobra could tell Cherri all of his fucked up fears that he’d never dream of voicing to his brother because they’d make him even more anxious—and Cherri had seen some shit himself, so even though he was a little shocked to hear things like that coming from Kobra, he was never shocked by the things themselves. So it was only fair that Cherri should tell him, and hope that Kobra wouldn’t look at him like he had ever been anyone else besides who he was now.

“Biggest swarm of dracs I ever saw. Left me for dead. The last of the guys got trapped in a warehouse and went all kamikaze, I think. That’s what it looked like when I found ‘em after, anyway.” Saying it out loud hurt more than he thought it would, but it was a good kind of hurt, almost.

Kobra’s expression didn’t change. “Then what?” he murmured.

Cherri shrugged, momentarily out of words.

“Took up waveriding full time,” he said simply.

Kobra’s eyes dropped to Cherri’s bare arms. He ran a hand up one, ghosting over the radiation scars mingled with old laser burns that covered them.

Cherri appreciated how he did it so casually, like they didn’t really matter. Not like he was afraid Cherri would fall apart if he touched him.

“Skin cancer's gonna be a bitch in a few years,” Cherri said dryly. “Didn’t think I'd be around long enough for that to be an issue.”

“Hey,” Kobra snapped, a visceral _Don’t talk like that_. But he seemed to regret it and relaxed again, threading his fingers through Cherri’s. “Besides, they got shit for that now, man. If you can get your hands on it.”

“Hm. One good thing to come outta their fucking labs, then,” said Cherri, and then went on, suddenly a bit desperate because Kobra wasn’t reacting at all, not scared or angry or shocked or anything and good Lord, what would he have to confess to make him understand how bad it had been, how much blood he still had on the very hands that were playing with Kobra’s even now, “It wasn’t only dracs, you know, we went after all the exterminators, even the unmasked ones, back before they started masking everyone they sent out except high-level operatives, and there was collateral damage, too, when neutrals got caught in the crossfire and, and I didn’t care.”

Kobra didn’t say anything for a long minute. His thumb traced gentle circles into Cherri’s palm.

“I’ve heard the stories,” he said finally. “They were no better than Batts. They brainwashed people and drugged them up and pointed them in the direction they wanted. You were a weapon to them.”

“It was still me.”

“You weren't in your right mind.”

Cherri just shook his head. He’d felt plenty sane at the time. That was the scary part. He tried not to dwell on that, much.

“Well. Face the sun and keep your shadow behind you, right?” he said lightly.

Kobra hummed an assent. He nodded at the dog tags. “You kept these, though.” He couldn’t read them, not even in daylight. The names had been worn away a long time ago. One was Cherri’s, he was pretty sure. He didn’t know about the other one.

Cherri smiled a little—that sad, tiny smile Kobra hated seeing. “Penance, I guess. The albatross around my neck. So I don't forget.”

Kobra almost said that couldn't be quite right—that the thing about penance was that it was supposed to end eventually, or at least that was the impression he’d gotten from the little he’d heard—and at the last second he decided against it because he figured Cherri wasn’t in a debating mood at the moment, even about religious stuff, which he’d normally ramble on about for ages if you let him. (Personally Cherri was into one of those old religions, the ones with the beads and prayers and rituals and shit. He found it all peaceful, Kobra guessed, and while some of the lore was pretty interesting, Kobra didn’t really get it, though he couldn’t blame Cherri for believing in something that allowed you to make some sort of divine amends for your mistakes, either.)

“Albatross,” Kobra said instead. “That’s the Bible, right?”

“The Bible!” Cherri stifled a snort. “Ancient Mariner, dumbass.”

“Don’t laugh! How d’you expect me to keep all that shit straight?” Kobra elbowed him. Cherri was annoyingly well-read and spouted gibberish like that all the time, so earnestly that you could almost understand what he meant even without the original context.

He was usually pretty good about trying to explain what he meant from whatever old book or poem he got an idea from. But Kobra still wasn’t sure what an albatross was, or a mariner for that matter, and what either of them had to do with being an ex-child soldier.

“Anyway,” Kobra said, sobering. “You were just a kid.”

A chill ran through Cherri. He’d never told Kobra that. Had he?

“What?” he said, almost laughing. A small defense against suddenly being kind of creeped out.

“You know,” Kobra said, like he hadn’t just told Cherri one of his own secrets like a fucking psychic. “You’re not that much older than me. And you’ve been out here longer.”

So necessarily Cherri would be younger then, was what Kobra was getting at. And that was true enough—Cherri had left the Outskirts and hit the sand running when he was eleven? Twelve maybe? Whatever it’d been, he’d had a lot more time to get into shit. And he hadn’t had a brother to keep him out of it. But Kobra was avoiding Cherri’s gaze, which meant there was something he wasn’t telling him. Wasn’t telling him or wasn’t ready to say.

Cherri let it drop for now. “You were in the city longer,” he countered. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“Was boring, mostly,” Kobra said, truthfully enough.

The _mostly_ hung in the air between them, making the silence heavier.

“You had Poison though. That helped, right?” said Cherri.

Kobra was quiet for a long moment. And because Kobra was a mystery Cherri had spent a long time solving and Cherri just about had him solved, he could tell it was the kind of quiet that meant Kobra was either about to say something he felt guilty about, or pretend he hadn’t heard and change the subject altogether.

“Makes it harder, sometimes,” Kobra said at last.

He still wouldn’t meet Cherri’s eyes. Cherri wanted to assure him that it wasn’t a terrible thing to say, and he wasn’t terrible person for saying it, because it was true, after all—the closer you were to someone the more they could hurt you. Not on purpose, even. Just when things went wrong. Which was pretty often, out here. He wasn’t sure if Kobra would hear it, though.

“I can see that,” was all Cherri said.

“You’re different, you know?” said Kobra. “You’re okay.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“No, no, I mean,” Kobra groped for words, knowing Cherri probably knew exactly what he meant and was just teasing him but trying to get it right, because this was important, “You’re...you’re...I don’t have to _worry_ worry. About you.”

“I am pretty stable these days, aren’t I.” Cherri’s eyes crinkled up.

But Kobra was trying to be serious. “And you don’t worry about me.”

“I do,” said Cherri, sounding a little insulted Kobra seemed to think he cared so little that he wouldn’t.

“Not like that. Not like him,” said Kobra. “He trusts me, I guess. But he still sees me as a little kid. With you it’s... nice.”

Kobra wanted to explain it, that he would die for Party in a fucking heartbeat—fuck, he _had_ died for him in a heartbeat and he’d do it again without a second thought—but that loving Party was different, because it was just as taxing as it was rewarding. Party, screwed up and short-fused and passionate and infuriatingly protective as he was, felt like home to Kobra; Cherri felt like, like...like a good night’s sleep, or something. That wasn’t quite it though, and dammit, Kobra didn’t have words for things the way Cherri did or he’d be able to say how much it meant to him to have Cherri. One person, just one person who didn’t demand anything from him.

“Wish you didn’t have to go,” Kobra said quietly.

Cherri’s brow creased. “Go where?”

“Anywhere. Ever.” Kobra nuzzled impulsively into him, tucking his head under Cherri's chin.

Oh, KobraKid. Cherri slid a hand around to cradle the back of his head, hold him close. “You’re skipping to the end again.”

“Can’t help it.”

Cherri sighed and kept carding Kobra’s hair, letting him stay there with his ear pressed to Cherri’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. Because while Cherri had become well practiced in the art of savoring things without clinging to them, that was a lesson he didn’t think Kobra would ever learn.

Kobra hummed sleepily. “How’d you get caught up in that shit, anyhow? Nice boy like you.”

Cherri had to smile. Ignorance really was bliss, wasn’t it.

“Easiest thing in the world,” he said honestly.

The lure of belonging, a cause, a brotherhood. That was all it took. The rest crept up on you like quicksand until you were in too deep to get out even if you wanted to. With your comrades in arms beside you, you were legion, loving the hot sear of laserfire because it meant something, hatehatehate pumping through your veins like gasoline, like holiness. You were always on edge, every heart-pounding second, a grenade with the pin half-out, the artillery loud enough to drown out the screaming in your own head and nothing in the world but the crosshairs of your scope and orders crackling in your ear. Fierce hugs after a completed mission and sitting together around a corpse fire that billowed black rubber-mask smoke, carving more notches into the stock of your gun. Your only calling to turn anything white-clad that dared set foot into the zones blood red...

As for the waveriding, that had been deliberate. Good a method as any to try to burn away the past. But the way it wouldn’t let you go was much the same, in the end.

Cherri didn’t miss the Soldiers. He did miss the sun. More often than he cared to admit.

And it just had to be that, didn’t it. Of course it had to be that. Alcohol or zonemade drugs were pretty easily avoided, but when your love affair was with the sun itself, the one thing in the desert you couldn’t escape completely? Then you were fucked. By now the night had become just as familiar to him as the rays had been at one time. It was safer, easier that way, sleeping through daylight when he could. Much of zone life couldn’t be lived nocturnally, however, so to some extent he simply had to manage best he could.

He’d been a star boy all along, perhaps; he had just loved the nearest one a little too well.

“If it weren’t for Tommy...” Cherri began.

“Tommy.” Kobra pulled back to frown at him. “Wait. Chow Mein, Tommy?”

“He's a hardass, but he cares,” Cherri said. Kobra snorted. “He does! I wouldn't stop stealing his shit. Trying to, at least. I was fucked, man. Dehydration alone would do it, and I was a lot worse off than that. He had to shoot me.”

“He _what?_”

Cherri waved Kobra’s indignation away. “Just a warning. Bit of birdshot in the ass’ll take you down a notch pretty quick, even if you’re already burned to hell. I still didn’t leave, apparently. Probably tried to throttle him for doing it, I don’t really remember. Ended up locked in a closet in his cellar. Longest week of my life. He’d bring in some water and food a couple times a day, and poke his head in occasionally to tell me to stop screaming cause I was freaking out the customers. Anyway, when I was over the worst of it and he finally let me out, he handed me a broom and told me I wasn’t going to steal from him anymore, and I just...I dunno, man. I just took it.”

“Damn.” Kobra studied Cherri’s neutral face. Did he really not know how remarkable that was? The strength of will it must have taken to not laugh in Chow Mein’s face and walk right back out into the sunlight the way a lesser person would without a second thought?

“I joked later he should start running a rehab thing instead of the store,” Cherri said. “He was all, ‘One wavehead screwup per lifetime is plenty for me to handle, thank you very much.’ But he didn’t mean anything by it.”

Then he laughed, a bit hysterically—he couldn’t stop himself, because this was a ridiculous conversation to be having if you thought about it, really, and it was stupidly late and they were both on the last phase of drunk where everything was too real and unreal all at once and he didn’t know if he’d even remember any of this, come morning. And when he ran out of breath he just rolled into Kobra without a word, burying his head in the crook of Kobra’s shoulder. He suddenly couldn’t face him anymore, not after all he had said—but God help him, there was nowhere for him to go but nearer.

Kobra stiffened briefly, a little startled. He gave Cherri’s shoulder a hesitant pat. “Y‘kay?”

“Tired,” Cherri mumbled. “Kobra. ‘m so _tired_.”

Tired tonight, yes—bone-tired, drop fucking dead tired, so tired even _breathing_ would hurt if he was any less inebriated right now—but always tired, too. Tired of the sun’s relentless, taunting glare, tired of never being able to outrun the past, tired of living with himself. Of living with ghosts.

“I know.” This time it was Kobra’s turn to pull him in, and he did, so easily in contrast with his usual awkwardness that it baffled Cherri for a moment until he realized Kobra probably did it all the time for someone else—Poison, maybe, or the Girl. “I know.”

It felt so backward for their roles to be reversed like this. The few times before that they’d fallen asleep together it had always been Cherri comforting Kobra, after he had started to doze only to jerk fully awake again, breath already hitching at the mere thought of the terrors lurking behind his eyelids waiting for them to shut. (Kobra was more scared of the _idea_ of nightmares than he was of the actual nightmares themselves, Cherri suspected, though Kobra probably didn’t realize that himself.) It had always been Cherri hugging Kobra close to ward off the worst of them just by being near, telling him it was safe to sleep now because he wasn’t going anywhere.

But this way was good, too. So good.

Pressed against Kobra with his hand on Cherri’s back and an ankle hooked over his to keep him from falling off the couch, Cherri let his eyes close. He barely heard the heard soft padding footsteps approach and was only vaguely aware of the blanket settling over the two of them, heavy and warm.

He drifted off before the footsteps completely faded again.

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, HUGE shoutout to Toad1 (tommychowmein on tumblr), who kindly let me incorporate some SFP elements into my Cherri’s backstory! (Seriously, check out The Insect King and the rest of Toad1’s stuff, especially if you like Cherri and Tommy Chow Mein and Doctor D—it’s soooo well-written and some of my favorite killjoy fic of all time. We STAN.) Secondly, thanks to KillTheDJ who is always such an inspiration to me as a writer in general, and thirdly shoutout to pinkstationhero’s headcanon on tumblr that the four each secretly love the Spice Girls and has no idea any of the others do, which I had to sneak in a line referring to because that’s just too funny.


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